The last days of the twentieth century and the first days of the twenty-first were certainly memorable. I was finally coming to terms with being separated and in the days leading up to Christmas, I’d gone to stay with H. in LA. We’d driven up Route 101 to see friends in Carmel and then spent a couple of dreamy nights at the Post Ranch Inn, before saying a sad farewell on Christmas Eve. On hearing that I was going to be spending Christmas Day alone, Peter Gabriel and his wife Meabh invited me to join them, along with Peter’s daughters and charming father, for lunch at the Hempel Hotel. By the end of the meal, half the restaurant had gathered around our table and was having an animated discussion about what the next millennium held in store. I hadn’t realised how much fun you can have when you stray away from the traditional path.
That night I drove to the Dewars before going on for a Boxing Day lunch with the Deardens and their eclectic group of guests and catching a flight to Johannesburg where I met up with the children – they’d spent Christmas with Robert in Kenya. We then flew north to join Mum and Dad at Richard’s safari lodge, Ulusaba. The only other guests were a family from Hamburg and we toasted the New Year together, our elderly parents arm-in-arm, all of us aware that less than sixty years earlier they were expected to be mortal enemies.
There was time for reflection, and time to talk, as we sat around campfires: the nights were alive with singing frogs and growling cats, and with crickets rasping out their African rhythm.
‘Oh Dad, I feel so fortunate,’ I said, giving the fire a poke. ‘I’m so grateful to you for having me. I just don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this ridiculous life.’
Dad purred beside me, taking another sip of his gin.
‘I feel I should be doing more, giving back in some way,’ I continued, ‘but I’m not sure how to go about it.’
‘Ah, darling,’ Dad said, touching my cheek with his now-shaky finger, ‘don’t worry too much about it – every stage in life has its decade.’ He paused, considering his words carefully. ‘Right now, your priority is to make a nest for your children and provide them with the security to launch themselves off when they grow up. Then you can set about making a difference in the world.’
Dad was right, as ever, but I hadn’t realised just how soon my time to make a difference would arrive.
Navin and the Bannisters also felt the weight of the millennium’s importance, and initiated the idea of an annual Easter Pilgrimage. Our three families, plus Howell, gathered in Petersfield on Good Friday morning. We walked in torrential rain along the South Downs Way, resting over a pub lunch and then stopping in the late afternoon to re-enact Christ’s passion under the dripping branches of an ancient oak. Exhausted and soaked to the skin, we arrived at Winchester Cathedral just in time for evensong. The priest welcomed our bedraggled band of pilgrims, including our golden retriever Millie, who, overwhelmed by the moment, couldn’t stop herself from howling along with the angelic choir.
The following day we trudged on from Winchester towards Salisbury, keeping the cathedral’s majestic spire in sight for the entire afternoon. Then came a Saturday evening feast and, the following morning we went to the Easter Sunday cathedral service. Thus began an annual gathering and since 2000 we’ve hiked along many of the great pilgrimage routes in England and Wales, mostly in spring sunshine. As with our annual Necker holidays, the group photographs taken every year outside a cathedral, and often with a beaming bishop at our centre, give us the opportunity to view the past as if watching a stop-motion film: the children, at first so young, grow taller; us adults, once strong, increasingly showing signs of age, with the odd knee brace or hiking stick creeping in.
***
I’d been dreading receiving this phone call from Shelagh and when I did, it winded me like a kick in the stomach. ‘Don’t you dare cry, Ness,’ she said.
‘I won’t, I promise,’ I said, as I crouched in the pantry behind the kitchen, away from the children, trying to compose myself. ‘Where has it come back?’
‘It’s in my lungs this time,’ said Shelagh. ‘I start chemo tomorrow.’
‘Oh fucking fuck shit wank,’ I said, instead of crying.
We were already marking every moment as if it was imbued with a special significance, but now that Shelagh’s cancer was on the march, we upped the ante on every front. Voyage, conveniently located next to the Royal Marsden Hospital, was one of our favourite clothes shops, and as proof that she was going to beat her disease, Shelagh would buy a new dress before every chemo session. The Bannister family bought Great Orchard near Petworth, an Arts and Crafts house complete with sunken garden and rolling views. Shelagh set about decorating it with her usual style, balancing optimism about her future with a desire to leave a fitting legacy. Every walk we took, every picnic we planned and every meal we ate was undertaken with awareness and gratitude.
In the summer of 2001, we rented a floor of a palazzo overlooking the Accademia Bridge in Venice. Shelagh, then in the middle of chemo, was determined not to let the children feel any hint of her suffering and her bravery made her plight all the more painful to witness. The Bannisters and I were joined by all our children, Howell, a new friend called Stefan van Raay, the delightful Dutch director of the Pallant House Gallery, and Robert.
Writing this now, I can’t recall discussing Robert joining us on a holiday, and nor do I remember talking about the fact that there weren’t enough bedrooms and that we would have to share. However, I do remember the holiday. The early-morning walks, with Stefan guiding us around notable churches and their masterpieces. Robert hiring a Riva and a driver, and taking the glamorous boat to Murano, where Shelagh and I bought eye-wateringly expensive sets of wine glasses, and to the Lido, where the film festival was taking place. I remember going to the Frette linen shop, where Shelagh bought a set of fine linens to adorn her new bed. She had begun to plan her end as she had lived – beautifully.
Over the years, I’ve grappled with the question of why I allowed Robert to re-enter our lives. To justify his destruction of our family life, he’d had to focus only on the negatives of my character, viewing everything I said through a dark prism. Seeing myself through his eyes had taken its toll on my confidence; choosing to step back into his gaze was verging on the suicidal.
His departure five years earlier had profoundly unsettled our family. We were just beginning to thrive again, the children accepting their dual lives and enjoying undivided attention from each of us, and I’d managed to use my time away from them positively, reading, working, enriching friendships, travelling and pursuing ideas.
I’d always accepted that outside forces had played a major role in our separation, while also acknowledging that we hadn’t made each other really happy for years. I liked to remember the good times – Robert’s brilliant mind and the fun of being with someone who gave his energy to everything. As a family, we Bransons tend to forget anything bad that’s happened to us, and my father’s Quaker philosophy – ‘believe in the goodness of others’ – echoed in my subconscious.
I relished my trips to LA to visit H., and it thrilled me to know he came to London regularly. Our relationship could hardly be described as having a future – our focus was on our own growing families – but the time we spent together was fulfilling and, at that time, suited us both brilliantly.
Deep down in my heart I knew that the children would be better off if Robert and I were united as parents during their teenage years, and it’s impossible to separate your own well-being from your children’s. Robert missed home, the family and the comfort of knowing he was doing the right thing. I missed all these things too, but I also missed Robert, the Robert I still believed in and loved. On returning home from Venice, he sort of just moved in. I’m not sure how it happened, but one explanation that I can muster is that our family complications paled into insignificance in the face of Shelagh’s suffering. I also held onto the belief that our family was built with strong enough foundations to give us a chance of rebuilding a meaningful life together.
We briefly discussed this as representing a new beginning. I so wanted to feel love from him again and so wanted to feel part of a committed couple. To draw a line under our old marriage, we took the Central Line from Notting Hill to the City for an appointment with our divorce lawyers. After Robert had left in 1996, we got as far as signing a decree nisi; now, five years later, we both signed the decree absolute, the final piece of paperwork that ended our old, contaminated marriage.
‘I wish all our divorcing couples came in looking so happy and in love,’ said the young lawyer, as Robert and I hugged each other when the paperwork was complete.
Two days after Robert moved back in, we drove thirteen-year-old Noah down the M4 to begin his first term at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. Both Robert and Humphrey had gone there, and Noah was looking forward to starting his new chapter. Robert and I were still in a state of shock at finding ourselves back living together, and delivering our firstborn to boarding school make things feel even stranger. On finding Noah’s dorm, it became apparent that I hadn’t read the equipment list properly and had failed to pack any linen. Noah’s roommate was Jack Whitehall, who would later entertain us all with his stand-up and acting career. His mother Hilary, who was efficient and incredibly kind, told us what we needed and Robert went into town to buy it. Then, having made up Noah’s bed, we said our strained goodbyes, memories of our own first days at boarding school catching in our throats. Walking away down the corridor, we could hear the sound of Noah and his new friend Jack’s hysterical giggling. He was going to be fine.
On the way back to London we stopped for fuel and Robert filled our diesel car up with petrol. A truck towed us to a garage and we sat in a dimly lit Indian restaurant next door for two silent hours, waiting for them to pump out the tank before we could set off for home again.
Three days later, the planes struck the Twin Towers. Along with the rest of the world, I watched the towers collapse over and over again, mesmerised by the visual power of the attack and realising that the world was never going to be the same again.
From the day of Robert’s return, we were clearly living on parallel tracks. I was yearning to rebuild trust, security and love, while he was agitated and looking for any reason not to spend time at home. If I had been wiser back then, I would have responded differently, but he still felt the need to justify leaving his young family five years previously, which began to chip away at my confidence. Looking back now, the answer to our conflict was right in front of our eyes. Since 1990 and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, we’d witnessed the power of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to relieve the suffering of perpetrators and victims, enabling them to live in harmony after the most dreadful atrocities. Clearly our impasse was on a different scale altogether, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu understood that compassion, apology and forgiveness are required to heal and free the soul.
Robert seemed unable to acknowledge the suffering that his actions had inflicted on us, and I in turn was too scared to ask him how he felt. He seemed to translate all the emotions that had been thrown up over the previous five years – shame, disappointment, entrapment and frustration – into resentment. At times it felt like he’d returned home to torture me with his unhappiness, for to live with someone you are unable to love is an act of indescribable cruelty.
And of course, the elephant in the room was Becky. The mere thought of her would make my head swim and adrenalin would pump through my veins, the lioness in me protecting my cubs from outside predators. I feared that by mentioning her name I would be making her real and inviting her to enter our lives once more. But the truth was that by not addressing that elephant, it grew larger by the day.
I believed that I could tough it out, but instead of confronting our misery I stuck to my mantra, ‘accept and be free.’ Robert was unable to hold me close and offer any intimate kindness or say anything that would boost my self-esteem. He knew in his heart why he’d left home, and seeing myself reflected in those cold eyes dragged me even lower. He kept asking me to give him time, but as the weeks passed, I became even more hurt, depressed and insecure.
The boys seemed to be in their own worlds and were able to take it in their stride; but Flo was angry. ‘Daddy can’t just leave home when I’m seven and return when I’m eleven without saying a word!’ she said.
‘Just give him time, Flo,’ I replied weakly. Our friends and family were overjoyed to see us living as a family, so we had little option but to play along.
***
In the mid-nineties, Richard had attempted to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon – an audacious plan requiring a vast technical team and optimal weather conditions. The experts selected Marrakech as the perfect launch site because it had still air at ground level and a powerful jet stream in the atmosphere above. For three years running, Richard, his two co-pilots, technical team and an entourage of about two hundred friends, family and press went there for a launch. These were the days before mass tourism arrived in Morocco, and the government saw to it that we were all treated like gods. The heady mix of the mystery of Marrakech and the excitement around the project was intoxicating, and I formed lasting friendships with people who opened up their incredible city to me. Richard’s balloon failed to make it around the globe in the end, but I’d been introduced to a world of new opportunities.
The city that had so captivated my heart back in 1983 was about to take over my soul. In 2002, while Robert was running the Marathon des Sables through the Sahara Desert, Howell and I organised a riding expedition to the Atlas Mountains with the de Klees and the Bannisters. Mum and Dad joined us in the evenings as we sat around our campfires.
‘Oh my goodness, I feel good in this country,’ I said, quaffing a glass of surprisingly good Saharan rose as we lay on the rug-strewn ground after a long day in the saddle.
‘We should buy a riad together,’ suggested Howell, out of the blue. ‘Just a little two-bedroomed lock up somewhere in the medina,’ he added hastily, managing my expectations. I said nothing, but the following day, while riding over the grassy plains, I began dreaming about Howell’s idea. I wanted to reinforce our friendship, but there was another, deeper reason for investing in Morocco: since 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, there had been a small but noticeable change in Western attitudes towards the Arab world and I felt an urge to swim against that ugly tide.
The following day, we were having lunch with our Moroccan friend Abel Damoussi when Howell asked him if he knew of any small riads that might be available to buy. Abel’s eyes lit up – of course he did. With our fantasy suddenly becoming a possibility, I began to get cold feet, while Mum poured me another glass of wine. ‘Nessie, how many times have I told you? Don’t be such a spoilsport!’ And with that, we traipsed off to check out what Abel had up his sleeve.
None of the riads we saw felt quite right. A month later, Howell returned to Marrakech for a friend’s birthday party and spent a happy afternoon speeding down alleys on a scooter with his arms around the waist of a young estate agent, and we both returned a few weeks later to view his shortlist. But again, none of the riads felt quite right. The light was dimming and. Adil Inti, the agent, was looking nervous; we’d only flown out for the day and were due to leave the next morning.
‘There is one more,’ he said. ‘It’s a little beyond your budget, I’m afraid, but it may be worth a look.’
‘Nothing ventured,’ said Howell, as he dodged an ageing donkey plodding its way home.
Crouching through a battered door-within-a-door, we groped our way down a long, dark corridor, through arches and over numerous thresholds to a dimly lit courtyard. There, before us, was a sight to behold: an orange tree surrounded by elegant colonnades and original mashrabiya windows. The ancient building was dissolving into dust. I shot a hand to my mouth to stop myself screaming in excitement.
‘I love it, Howell,’ I whispered, grabbing him by the arm. ‘It’s the one.’
Adil took us up a crumbling staircase to the terrace. Lit only by his cigarette lighter, there were sheer drops where steps were missing, but the scene once we reached the top was worth risking our lives for. The sun had dropped behind the Atlas Mountains, throwing them into silhouette and there, just a hundred metres away, was the Koutoubia, the thirteenth-century minaret and symbol of Moroccan spirituality, lit up in all its glory. The muezzin’s call to prayer was echoing over the rooftops and the moon was rising.
It was now too dark to see the size of the riad and the proportions of the rooms we could see indicated that it was considerably larger than what we’d set out to buy. But buying it was not a rational decision – this was love. We offered the owners the asking price there and then; they agreed and we shook hands.
We asked Adil if he thought refurbishment was feasible. ‘It is important to remember one thing about Morocco,’ he said, his eyes twinkling. ‘In Morocco, anything is possible.’ He paused for a while, as we sighed in relief before adding, ‘But nothing is certain.’ This was a sentiment that has made us laugh and grind our teeth in frustration in equal measure over the last two decades.
On 25 July 2002, we found ourselves in the office of a notaire and surrounded by three professional men and their weeping wives, illiterate women who signed the papers with their thumbprints. It was while we were signing the papers that the notaire read from the deeds: ‘Here we have the clean title deeds for number five, Derb Moulay Ben Hessian Cinq.’ Howell and I nodded. The notaire then took a deep breath and went on, ‘and numbers six, seven and eight.’
Only then did we learn that, rather than just buying the one house, we had also bought a fair proportion of the street. That night we celebrated our folly at Le Comptoir with fellow Marrakech adventurers Sarah and Christopher Hodsoll, drinking freely while we watched belly dancers, their hips trembling and fleshy tummies rolling. Before weaving our way back through the medina, we stopped outside our new front door and took a mound of wonky photos of ourselves, looking a little surprised.
There’s magic in the air in Marrakech and if the energy is right, everything you need is dropped before you. Before we left the following day, nursing thumping heads and asking ourselves ‘What on earth have we done?’, ‘How on earth are we going to restore this old palace?’ and ‘Are we insane?’, Abel told us to go to the La Renaissance cafe in Gueliz, the city’s new town, to meet Said Jabaoui, the former driver of the mayor of Marrakech, who agreed to become our caretaker while we pondered our predicament. An hour later we were on a flight back to London.
***
That Marrakech magic followed me everywhere I went – exceptional people appeared in my life, regardless of what country I was in. I was grumpy with Robert for agreeing to fly us all to Kenya for the October half-term, feeling that we needed some time at home to try and knit our family back into shape. To compound my irritation, Eric, a parent from school who had organised the trip, cried off at the last minute and we ended up staying on our own in Hippo Point, a grand mock-Tudor mansion on the banks of Lake Naivasha. But joy of joys, it turned out that the elegant and talented couple who ran the estate were looking for a new challenge.
‘Do you fancy a year in Marrakech?’ I asked, on hearing that they had just handed in their notice.
‘Yes,’ they said, without skipping a beat. Frederic and Viviana never asked what their salary would be, and we never checked their references – we simply trusted the gods of the project, and they smiled down on us.
Frederic, with his Gallic shrug and athletic presence, arrived in Marrakech in February 2003, three weeks before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. He set to work immediately and hired a team of builders to strip the building down before we started on the rebuild. At every opportunity, Howell and I would fly out to see what was happening.
And thus began the most rewarding creative partnership I have ever experienced. Howell, Frederic and I, often joined by Viviana, complemented each other’s strengths, encouraged each other’s more outlandish design ideas and trusted each other’s instincts entirely. During the first part of the restoration, I learned an enormous amount about design and, this being Morocco, about decoration too. We trusted Frederic implicitly as he set to work, bracing the thick exterior walls, digging an underground water catchment chamber, insulating, wiring and plumbing. We sent out money on a monthly basis, never doubting that it was being well spent. By the end of 2003, just ten months later, it was time to decorate the six bedrooms and buy furniture for the dining room, sofas for the mini cinema and books for the library. Compensating for my loveless existence at home, I poured my heart and soul into El Fenn and, as an act of faith in the project, shipped out seven paintings from my collection, including a sensual, two-metre-high masterpiece by William Kentridge, a large Terry Frost canvas of rich oranges and reds and a geometric painting by Bridget Riley that Robert had given me many Valentine’s Days ago.
Moroccan artisans are famous for the quality of their work. Plaster was chiselled into decorative friezes and tiny ceramic briquettes known as zellige formed intricate patterns around doorways and over fireplaces. The walls were finished in tadelakt, a lime plaster mixed with pigments and then polished with stones, and the ceilings were made of stucco or hand-carved wood. Frederic inlaid camel bone in the walls in one room and brass-coloured balls in another. We designed the suites with romance in mind, with a bath next to a fireplace, rough-stitched leather floors, double showers, candles and incense.
Over our years of travelling together, we’d stayed in a number of hotels and loved playing the ‘imagine this was your hotel’ game. ‘Deary me,’ Howell would say, ‘just look at that wallpaper.’
‘What would you do if this was your hotel?’ I’d reply. And then we’d be off.
At every stage of the refurbishment, when we came to decide whether we should we get the best-quality showers, kitchen or whatever else, our decision was always ‘yes’. It was only as the expenses began ratcheting up that we realised that rather than offering the entire riad as a holiday let, we would have to rent the rooms out individually. Howell and I had become accidental hoteliers.
During El Fenn’s refurbishment, we pored over books, taking inspiration from St Paul’s Cathedral, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and closer to home, from the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech and the Berber dwellings in the Atlas Mountains. In principle, we only used natural materials and, to support the local economy, employed local craftsmen.
Frederic was also a genius, and the excitement of waiting for his weekly crop of photos to appear on my computer screen – agonisingly slowly, in the days of dial-up Internet – was intoxicating.
On 15 March 2003, we welcomed guests to Howell’s fiftieth birthday party at El Fenn just as our builders were sweeping the rubble out through the tradesman’s entrance. His ninety expectant friends, in blissful ignorance of the previous twenty-four-hour panic, were entertained by fire eaters, snake charmers and Nor, a transgender belly dancer, on our terrace under the Katoubia. I raised a glass to Howell and he raised a glass to us. We’d done it, though we had no idea how ambitious the project was yet to become.
We were indebted to the many people who made El Fenn come to life: to Frederic, but also to our architect Amine Kabbaj, who was to play a key role in the next chapter of my life; to Abel Damoussi, who encouraged us to go for it in the first place; and to the open-hearted Moroccans who welcomed us at every turn.
Our expat friends were always there for us with words of caution and encouragement: the filmmakers Danny Moynihan and Katrine Boorman, and Trevor Hopkins, Kate Fenwick and her partner, the charismatic gangster-turned-sculptor Jimmy Boyle, the Hodsoll family, Stephen Skinner and Carinthia West, who wrote an article on El Fenn for Harpers & Queen soon after we opened.
A few months later, while cooking the kids’ supper in London, I received a call from Mum, who was staying at El Fenn. ‘Nessie, the king is coming to visit,’ she said. ‘There are security men everywhere!’
‘Mum, slow down for a second,’ I said. ‘Which king are you talking about?’
‘The King of Pakistan,’ she replied.
‘Goodness – is Frederic around?’
It transpired that President Musharraf had flown from Karachi to Marrakech via London for a state meeting, and having read the issue of Harpers that featured El Fenn on the way, he had asked the King of Morocco to organise a visit. When he toured El Fenn, Frederic said he took an interest in every detail. ‘One day Lahore will become a world-class tourist destination,’ he told Frederic, ‘and I want El Fenn to be our inspiration.’
Condé Nast Traveller soon picked up on the Harpers story and put us on their list of the ten best new hotels in the world. El Fenn was launched.
***
In mid-December 2004, I received a call from one of our old neighbours in Midhurst, who had found Humphrey slumped in his favourite armchair. It transpired that he had called his girlfriend Karen to wish her goodnight, taken a sip of tea and then had a heart attack. Along with the immediate family, Karen and a couple of neighbours, a few of our good friends came to the funeral to support Robert and Clare; they included Shelagh and Matthew. I noticed Shelagh staring at Humphrey’s coffin. Her fight was continuing, but her hideous disease was gaining on her. Robert’s Uncle Tim gave a remarkably honest address, which allowed each of Humphrey’s children to mourn him, knowing that their father’s demons and their own struggles had been acknowledged.
A fortnight later, Matthew called us at 3 a.m. Shelagh had died, after an agonising ten days of semi-consciousness. I sat up for the rest of the night, relieved that her suffering was over but unable to believe that such a life force could come to an end. Matthew had made sure she died at home, surrounded by scented candles and with her children nearby, her emaciated figure dressed in a starched white nightie and lying between her soft Frette sheets.
My one contribution to Shelagh’s funeral was to organise the flowers adorning her coffin. The florists I chose, Wild at Heart, understood exactly what she would have wanted – a cascading mass of creamy blossoms, as if nature had sprinkled them over her. Ken Berry flew in from Los Angeles, Simon Draper from South Africa and Richard and Joan from Necker, and St Luke’s Church on Sydney Street in Chelsea was packed with her friends and colleagues. I watched in horror as the coffin was carried up the aisle: no one had thought to remove the cellophane wrapping from the flowers, giving it the look of a roadside car crash memorial. I fixated on those wretched flowers and to this day feel that I let her down. Navin gave a deeply felt, touching address and after the service we all walked across the King’s Road to Chelsea Old Town Hall, where we drank a glass or two of Cloudy Bay wine, Shelagh’s favourite tipple.
As the day drew to a close, we laid Shelagh to rest in the heart of her beloved South Downs. The children had picked snowdrops on the way into the graveyard at Bignor. I noticed that Florence, not having time to gather her own posy, had picked up a terracotta flowerpot of snowdrops from the back of the hearse. Shelagh’s stoic Scottish mother, who was burying the second of her three daughters – for her eldest daughter Mog had also succumbed to this hideous disease – stood silent and tearless beside me. The vicar said a final prayer, wiped his hands on his cassock and nodded to the children, who threw their little posies into the grave.
‘Please don’t, Flo,’ I thought to myself, and I watched as the pot flew in slow motion from her hands, before hitting the wood six feet below with a resounding clunk. Shelagh’s sister Lorna and I remained behind to free the flowers of their cellophane at last, before joining the others for a cup of tea at Great Orchard.